I’ve worked 13 hours straight and had to organize a push to get us fed dinner.
There’s a good chance I’m stuck here for 2 more hours, meaning I get 0 time to do anything except sleep and do this again.
I want to quit so badly, but I’m basically forced to be here because this job market is such shit that it took a year to get this job. And I consider myself lucky to have this.
There’s a thread on lemmygrad from someone that’s also exhausted around the discourse about the American “left”. Yes we suck, yes we are privileged compared to a lot of people, yes our organizing is tame and not effective, yes my material conditions mean I’m not doing adventurism and neither are my comrades.
BUT don’t claim we’re not trying. I know people working two jobs. I technically have 2 jobs and am maybe able to get back on my feet financially in a few months. We still do what we can and it’s not enough but we’re not at that point. Yeah that’s privileged if you call being scared shitless of being homeless and being abused by literally every other human here…
I’m tired
Being an american is like being a fish in a bowl while the house it on fire.
Damn. That was really fucking good. Can I steal this or is it communal property?
There’s a fantastic quote from Black Communism, “If my neighbor wants to lynch me, that’s his problem. If my neighbor has the power to lynch me, that’s my problem.”
Privilege between the poor dispensed by the parasite class has been a tactic to drive the lower class against itself since the times of knights and peasants. Best way to equality is to destroy the parasite class and redistribute its resources. Again and again until the world proletariat are unified.
Which includes destroying their propaganda centers and lack of health resources that drive lynching behavior!
Trust, as someone who has spent a lot of time working for local wages in the global south, there is still a big difference. Making $3 usd an hour in brutal heat for 15 hours a day 6-7 days a week with almost none of the luxury goods, recreational options or other comforts an average American has access to
with almost none of the luxury goods, recreational options or other comforts an average American has access to
a bunch of us don’t have those either.
Eh, I live in the states now and do work with unhoused people and people in poverty and plenty still drink alcohol, eat treats, watch slop on their big TVs and smart phones, eat out and more. Of course some people don’t but it’s a marginal amount. I’ve literally watched football on a big screen TV in a tent in a homeless encampment in the US
i remember fox news being shocked that poor people had refrigerators
I think Jabril’s point is that there are parts of the world where they do not (have access to luxury items, obviously literally refrigerators would be an extreme example to choose - yet it’s still true for some).
I think it’s not fair to compare what Jabril is saying to Fox News thinking homeless people shouldn’t have refrigerators.
I used to live in a house with no windows, bug nets on beds to avoid mosquito illness, snakes coming and going as they please, no hot water, no refrigerator. Our daily pot of beans just sat on the stove and got turned back on in the morning to heat it up. The only meat was the scrap organs from a butcher friend every now and then. I knew people that only ate rice because the colonial destruction of local knowledge deprived people of the ability to even forage for food, they didn’t even know what was growing naturally around them anymore and otherwise couldn’t afford to buy groceries in general because international tourists fucked the local economy. I never heard people complaining, although the saddest part for me was that some of the younger generation hated their native language and Indigenous features because they blamed their Indigeneity on their conditions.
…I wish I knew what to say, but I don’t. Thank you for sharing this. Humanity will never truly be free until we abolish the imperialist systems which maintain this inequality.
And these conditions weren’t even bad compared to other places! Imagine being a miner in the congo, not to mention places suffering from war. When I think of my friends I mostly remember smiles and laughter… To be in Syria, Palestine, Sudan, or so many other places is truly a hell that makes even what I say seem incredibly privileged
That’s a good way to take someone’s obvious stress at their situation and shit on it.
Is the comparison not invited by the discussion of privilege? Who else are they meant to be privileged over as an oppressed worker in the imperial core?
Falling all over myself to make sure you know how bad you don’t have it.
Why are you being so aggressive and irony poisoned about this?
Yeah, I’d rather live my current life stressed up to the gills, in student loan debt that gets chipped away penny by penny, one catastrophe away from the kill line, spending 12 hours a day in an office managing a couple million in yearly budgets but able to have iPhone and car, compared to the poorest Indian who breaks their back 12 hours a day to live packed with 30 other people with no healthcare, no future, and no consumer goods.
I’d also rather be the same thing in China instead, working 12 hours a day in China in a similar position.
That doesn’t invalidate my struggle, but it’s also objectively the truth that one is worse than the other.
The left is cooked not because some of us are privileged, but in a supreme irony, because most of the left is so infantile they’d rather throw tantrums and shit on the chessboard and sentence half the left to death for the most basic discussions, or for eating meat, or for being religious, or for liking anime.
Every single day I look at what we’re up against and I see pure fucking psychopathic evil with unlimited money and unlimited guns and unlimited soldiers. Landlords that own a dozen properties, millionaires at the Ritz, oceanfront mansions, real estate corps. And I have to serve them with a smile on my face as a professional.
This is what we’re up against, and this is how we’re going to act?
Every day I am vindicated in simply giving money to China directly rather than supporting Western orgs with this kind of behavior.
or for eating meat
Passive-aggressive dig against vegans on Hexbear? Must be a day ending in -y.
Why can’t those fucking annoying vegans just shut up while I murder and abuse innocents all day every day? I’m a leftist btw
or for liking anime.
Yet, you did not mention the class we should oppress the most: Gamers.
No vulgar language here. G*mers, please.
China has a go fund me? You can just do that?
OP invited these kinds of replies by comparing his struggles to those of oppressed people in other countries. I don’t think people would be jumping down his throat if it was just a vent post.
I totally understand where he is coming from and empathize with some of it. I even understand why he is making the comparison, feeling so much frustration over time will bubble up and spill out in irrational ways. But those thoughts are still ones that should be interrogated by the individual having them. It’s not wrong to feel self pity sometimes, IMO, and it’s not wrong to be frustrated about how we in the US are treated, it’s just the comparison piece that needs to be worked on.
In 2010 the dumbest people you’ll ever know were bringing up arguments about how men can’t be more privileged than women because the queen of England has it a lot better than a bum on the streets. They were wrong because “privilege”, as a term, means something specific.
I didn’t say anything implying they should feel bad or that their feelings are invalid or anything of the sort, just saying that although one might not feel privileged in America, it is all relative and no American would trade with the equivalent level of workers from global South
Here’s the thing, and I think about this a lot, you are privileged. You make more money that the global south, you have access to more niceties, etc, etc. but you are still suffering. Your excess value is still being stolen from you left right and center. Their cause is your cause and vis versa. We must remember: We are all oppressed by the bourgeois, and none of us are free until all of us are free. Just try to move forward everyday.
Have you tried tweeting at your congressman? Maybe writing a strongly worded letter will help. Perhaps you’re ready to start a petition? You could also start planning the next nationwide one-day protest 3 months from now.
Are you me from 15 years ago?
Still working
I’ve worked 13 hours straight and had to organize a push to get us fed dinner.
There’s a good chance I’m stuck here for 2 more hours, meaning I get 0 time to do anything except sleep and do this again.
Oh shit same here, just finished a 15 hour shift. Thankfully I got 7 hours left before my next shift at the hopes and dreams crushing factory.
Those dreams ain’t gonna crush themselves
I love my AmeriKKKan comrades who also hate AmeriKKKa. When I complain about the AmeriKKKan “left” I try to put “left” in quotes because I’m talking about the radlib-in-denial chauvinists who look for every excuse to preserve the nationalism they claim not to have.
Also, wow that sucks really bad (the 15 hour shift). I’m sorry to hear that. The job market, too. Death to America.
There’s a very mid burger place near me that just put up one of those massive Amerikkka flags and I have to see it on my morning commute. Fuck nationalism and especially fuck anyone who thinks there’s anything “great” about this place
Fuck nationalism and especially fuck anyone who thinks there’s anything “great” about this place
Based and Comradepilled.
I love my AmeriKKKan comrades who also hate AmeriKKKa.
if you’re not feeling your privilege, it means you’re not feeling the horrors imposed on the rest of the world, you’re scared shitless of being homeless yes, but are you stressed out over the U.S. NATO and israel coming in and bringing back slavery to your streets on top of that? we have comrades from Mexico, Lebanon, Palestine, Cuba, Venezuela and a dozen other countries that can wake up tomorrow as a part of the 80 civilians killed by a U.S. special operation, can wake up in the next Libya. And the whole anti-immigration bullshit, a white cis American leftist man doesn’t have to worry about ICE coming in and sending him to a concentration camp.Yes, you fear falling into health debt and college debt, but not IMF debt.
And as far I’ve seen the western leftists who are actually doing something are a minority of a minority, I consider Hexbear to be one of the best leftist forums in the entire global north and goddamn some of you people can not be trusted, to not call out anyone here, in other forums or “leftists online” I saw many willing to completely ignore the genocide and saying vote for Kamalla Harris, the western left most of us see is “I condom hamas I condom maduro I condom china I condom regime I donate 5 dollar to rich man Hasan Piker”.
And your biggest privilege is the size of your success, if a communist revolution happens in the USA, it wouldn’t be bombed by the U.S., it wouldn’t have an embargo imposed on it by the U.S., it wouldn’t have its leaders assassinated by the U.S., stuff the rest of the world has to consider, the USSR at its size still got completely destroyed by U.S. interference, how would a revolution in Ghana survive?
I strongly agree with most of what you are saying but I would gently push back on this point:
if a communist revolution happens in the USA, it wouldn’t be bombed by the U.S., it wouldn’t have an embargo imposed on it by the U.S., it wouldn’t have its leaders assassinated by the U.S.
The American left is as weak as it is because the US has spent the last century bombing, economically disenfranchising, imprisoning, and assassinating every left-aligned or not-white-supremacist-aligned movement. Immediate examples that come to mind are Malcolm X, MLK, Fred Hampton, Eugene Debs, the bombings in Tulsa and Philadelphia, the Homestead strike, and the leadership of BLM after Ferguson.
I meant as in after the revolution is done and the U.S. capitalist state is gone
Also
BUT don’t claim we’re not trying.
https://hexbear.net/comment/6805346
We’ll do that when you stop claiming china isn’t trying.
One dude is not equivalent to arguably the world’s strongest economic superpower. They could say “no more Labubus” and shut off half our economy with sanctions overnight. I pick up a gun and become Swiss cheese before stepping foot in wherever I am trying to adventure. Don’t be silly.
so instead you want chinese people to get shredded into cheese instead of you,got it
You keep maximizing “pick up a gun” “adventurism” nobody’s suggesting that, obviously, it’s just a fact that American political activism hasn’t developed beyond going to marches. That’s partially due to people in your situation, too tired and beaten down to act, but don’t pretend anyone asking for more out of the imperial proletariat is telling you to go out like Van Spronsen
There’s a lot more than that going on. Part of the reason you don’t hear about it is the small scale, and mainstream media ain’t gonna tell you what local left groups are doing.
And I can’t talk about it for op sec reasons.
Then don’t make this post at all? Why have all these reasons and excuses for not doing action if you actually are doing action?
I can’t just rant? I’m not oppressed enough to complain about my life because according to you people I am king of the world. SO privileged over here running off 4 hours of sleep lol
Hang in there comrade.
Yeah, we don’t have to worry about bombs dropping on our heads, but we’re one injury away from ruin or looking over our shoulder for one snapped coworker or student with a military grade rifle. We have no real safety net besides what we can stitch together ourselves. Don’t be afraid to ask for aid. The best thing those of us in the heart of empire can do is help ourselves and help each other. Being ready to act, and having those around us also ready to act is more important than acting prematurely.
Yeah, we don’t have to worry about bombs dropping on our heads,
that’s less true historically than you’d think at first glance, especially for black people.
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when you say “eternal death to the KKKomprador WeSStern Left” this is who you’re being mean to btw
(yes i know i suck and so does my country but im trying ovah heeyah okay???
)“eternal death to the KKKomprador WeSStern Left”
Thanks for this, this is amazing. I’m going to steal this for next time I need it (probably when some european org - likely Die Linke - does something massively chauvinistic).
Can we get burning donkey and elephant emojis?
I’ve worked 13 hours straight
That alone is illegal as hell outside the Shaytan al-Akbar because of maximum work and rest period laws.
In a bitter irony, when I lived in the ameriKKKa, I had a job from 2011-13 which paid $8.50 an hour and until recently, was my highest-paying job ever - I also had the worst fucking living conditions ever despite this.
I only had to work a 12-hour shift once because we happened to have an urgent, large workload but was promised an extra R750 in addition to mandatory overtime pay. Of course the work period including overtime in a day is capped to 12 hours.
Yes, it is crushing to the soul. It is crushing in ways that are distinct from other’s experiences. Right now people are agitated and shit is wild out there, and that reflects back in our spaces here too. Hang in there. Is your life materially better than others? Yeah probably, but you aren’t empowered by that difference. We cannot act ethically within capitalism to change this imbalance. If you don’t take what you can get to keep yourself going it doesn’t get kicked downstream. It goes right back to the bosses! By design.
There is a line I always come back to: “we are trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death.” It is taxing on the soul to be here and witness this. This is the nature of capitalism. None of this does good things. Not even for the victors. Look at how wealth has twisted Musk into a caricature and filled his body with hormones and stimulants and all kinds of horseshit. Look at that weirdo infusing himself with his son’s blood. You can’t look at that and say “yeah, this is sustainable, this is working out for them.”
“I’m a man but I certainly don’t feel privileged” “I may be white but I don’t feel privileged”
it’s not about your feeling, it’s about reality. You’re not in the cobalt mines, or the sweatshops, or in Yemen or Gaza or Caracas or Tehran or Beirut or Vietnam or Cambodia or Laos or the innumerable places made unliveable by American imperialism. You can live a hard life as an American, plenty of people do. But the difference is being within the belly of the beast vs being on the receiving end of its hellfire. You can have a bad time with both, but one is more likely to kill you.
The gall to post this “not all imperial citizens” nonsense after we’ve killed dozens of innocents in Venezuela. I’m sure they worked hard, went to bed tired, and didn’t have enough hours in the day. The difference in our situations is the bombs and drones
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Cool so you want me to die to make you like me? Wtf do you want me to do to get on your good side?
Ya’ll are awful organizers. You need to meet people where they are and listen to them instead of talking down at everybody. But I guess you would rather call me racist and other names than seriously try to get anything done.
At least libs pretend they like me. Why should I work with people who are insufferable?
Someone saying that you’re privileged or being angry at the class you belong to is not necessarily a personal attack against you. With respect, the ability to hold that distinction is a mark of maturity not just in social justice but in all areas of life.
Hard to tell on here. And I know I’m privileged. The whole point of this rant was shit sucks for a lot of us in burger land too. We’re not all lying around buying labubus and eating fries all day over here!
The world’s richest man is a miserable basket case with several health issues. Most of us are in shitty situations. So who exactly is happy under Capitalism?
Hard to tell on here.
Without meaning to be harsh, I think that it’s not (assuming by “on here” you mean something specific to Hexbear rather than neurodivergence, etc.). And even if people sometimes make comments which you feel cross a line, some of the things which other people post which bother you may also come from places of personal hardship for them. Many people are or are related to victims of the imperial system.
I am intensely sympathetic to you for what you discuss in this post. These are real hardships and I’m glad that you’re organizing and doing what you can to make a difference for yourself and others. However, privilege is not something that is concerned with whether your life is hard or easy. It is both a relative and a systemic analysis. To respond to your original post directly, you don’t feel privileged and that is completely valid and understandable. However, the privilege Americans have over people in the global south is still real, and you still do have it.
This works on the same principles as all other conversations about intersectionality and related subjects. A poor white man may not feel privileged, but he doesn’t have to worry as much about being shot while crossing the street. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t face hardships. A poor American may not feel privileged, but he doesn’t have to worry as much about waking up tomorrow to find he is living under a neo-colonial military regime, or not waking up at all thanks to an American drone. That doesn’t mean that the American doesn’t face hardships.
Scratched
Wow you’re so cool
actin like your namesake
Beat me to it lmao
I have a mixed emotion about it. Like, I have had a Playstation in my life. Did having a Playstation make my life appreciably better? Probably not. Like, yeah, It was fun. In a hypothetical world would I have enjoyed like throwing mud at a wall in a bar with my friends more? Probably. Those people I see playing that game in tik tok seem to enjoy it more than most any video game I have played. I am sure there are some luxuries that are actually worth it. I just can’t in my head picture it.
yeah i genuinely think my life would be better if i had never seen or touched a computer
I empathize. I’m rowing in the same boat. It takes from us all, at the end of the day. Some ways alike, some ways not so much, but suffering and stress are still just that.
hugz.
Thanks
Whoa, that’s a great emoji.
We have the best emojis folks
